


Alone At Last

by youjik33



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Gen, ToT: Monster Mash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-27 18:44:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8412511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youjik33/pseuds/youjik33
Summary: "It's just the two of us now, my darling," Gertrude's father tells her.But that never seems to be the case. There are always other people around. Perhaps Gertrude can find a way to truly be alone...





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Persephones_Keeper requested Gertrude backstory, so I took a stab at it... so to speak.
> 
> Contains descriptions of abuse and murder alluded to in canon.

Gertrude perched on the top of the stairs, peeking through the railing when the doctor hurried in with his black bag. She was four years old then, and no one paid her any mind or explained to her what was going on; she sat there quietly in the dark as her father paced the floor below and smoked cigarette after cigarette. She could hear screaming, sometimes – her mother’s screams. She knew that much. They seemed to go on for hours and hours. She fell asleep to those screams, and woke suddenly when they stopped. Silence filled up the house, broken only by the ticking of the tall clock in the foyer. She could hear it, tick-tick-tick, echoing through the halls. Sleep-muddled, she didn’t know how long she had been there, crouching in the dark in her white nightgown, before her father finally came for her. His eyes were shadowed under his thick brows, and he gathered her in his arms. She couldn’t remember him ever doing that before.

“Your mama is gone,” he said. His voice sounded strange.

“Gone where?” Gertrude asked.

“To Heaven, my dear,” he said. “And your little baby brother, too.”

Gertrude felt vaguely disappointed. She’d been curious to meet the new baby.

“It’s just the two of us now, my darling,” her father said.

She squeezed her arms around his neck and smiled.

 

–

 

“Really, my darling, you must make some effort at basic courtesy if you want to have any hope of finding a husband,” Gertrude’s father said.

Gertrude looked up from her needlepoint. “And why should I want a husband?” she asked. “This house will be mine when you die, and I shall want for nothing. Why should I share it with some shallow fool of a man who can’t bear to be criticized? They’re only interested in me for my money, anyhow. To hell with the lot of them”

Once upon a time her father would have gasped at her language, but Gertude was nearly twenty now, and he had grown used to it.

“I just don’t want you to be all alone after I’m gone, my dear,” he said.

“Alone! I should like to be alone for once. When the house is mine I shall be. Right now it’s crawling with ants.”

“Ants?” her father echoed.

She meant the servants. Gertrude hated that she had so few moments truly to herself. It seemed someone was always coming in to dust or clean a window or ask what she wanted for dinner. When the house was hers, she would have no one. She could learn to cook for herself, and it would be just her and her knitting and needlepoint and the books in the library. Perhaps she would go to the theater on occasion, and she could buy all the penny dreadfuls she liked. (Gertrude’s father did not approve of the penny dreadfuls, but she continued to buy one every few weeks anyway.)

“Gertrude!” her father exclaimed.

Drawn from her reverie, Gertrude looked down to see a spot of fresh blood blooming among the needlepoint flowers. The needle was so sharp she hadn’t even noticed it entering her skin. She lifted her thumb, pressed it again into a clean white section of canvas, watched the color seep outward. Gertrude sucked her injured thumb into her mouth, tasting the coppery tang of blood on her tongue, and thought to herself that perhaps the servants could be gotten rid of sooner rather than later.

 

–

 

As she thought, the knife Gertrude has spirited from the kitchen was so sharp that none of them even woke up. She did little Maddie, the scullery maid, first; the girl sighed softly when Gertrude pushed the knife up under her ribs, and then went still. Gertrude worked quickly and efficiently, taking a certain amount of pleasure in the cleanliness of her work. When the last one was done she built up a fire in the library herself, and sat down to read.

She was so engrossed in her book that she didn’t even hear her father enter.

“Gertrude,” he said. His voice had that same broken hoarseness she had heard in it all those years ago, the night her mother had died. “Gertrude, what have you done?”

The knife still lay on the table beside her, though she’d cleaned off the blood. It shone brilliantly in the firelight. She lay her book down beside it and smiled at her father.

“Now we can be alone,” she said. “Just the two of us, the way it should have been always.”

“No one can know about this,” he said, pacing the room. He didn’t look at her. “I’ll tell the police a madman must have broken in. And you, you’re distraught. You mustn’t be disturbed. No one must question you.”

“I’m not distraught, Father,” Gertrude said.

“Of course not,” he sighed. “Listen, darling. Hide in the basement. I must protect you, so no one can take you away. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Father,” Gertrude said.

 

–

 

She had a cot in the basement, a lamp, a stack of books, and her father brought down a trunk of clothes. “You’ll have to stay here a few days,” he said, “until the police are gone.”

Gertrude was so comfortable reading there that it wasn’t until the fifth day, when she tried the door and found it locked, that she realized that her father had no intention of letting her out. He wasn’t protecting her; he was only protecting himself.

“A fool, like the rest,” she muttered. She had never had any intention of hurting him; she had done it all for him. Well, if he didn’t appreciate it, she didn’t need him, either. At least now she was truly alone.

Days went by, weeks. Time ceased to have meaning there in the dark. Gertrude read, and ate the food her father slipped to her through the door, and grew thin and pale with lack of sunlight. The house is mine, she thought. It’s meant to be mine, and mine alone.

One night, weak and tired, she lay down to sleep, and didn’t wake up for nearly a hundred and fifty years.

 

–

 

Gertrude did not sleep soundly. She stirred, sometimes, sensing in her dreamless rest the presence of other people around her, people in the house, in _her_ house. And then one afternoon, quite suddenly, she found herself awake.

The basement, her basement, was bare and empty. Her cot, her clothes, her books, they were all gone. But there was a man in her house. She couldn’t have explained how she knew that, but she did, and her first instinct was to keep him there. She was angry, and she was curious; who was this man, and how dare he intrude?

The basement door opened to her now, quite easily. It seemed everything came easily. The man screamed when he saw her, screamed himself hoarse, and she just laughed and laughed, and then let him go. She had scared him nearly to death; he wouldn’t be returning.

The house was hers now, and hers alone, as it was always meant to have been.

 


End file.
